I make my way through the car park to the entrance to the Hyderi Islamic Centre, along with several others. The mosque is on the outskirts of Croydon, where the jurisdictional boundaries of the London borough meets those of Kent; it stands opposite Addington Court Golf Club. Everyone is wearing funereal black. It is the final day of the June heatwave, and temperatures are reaching 340C outside. It is unbearably, unnaturally hot.
Prayers had already begun inside, but outside, children were giving out drinks, people were taking breaks and a group of volunteers were managing the complex parking arrangements required. Another car, then another, then another was being waved through. It was a relaxed but organised atmosphere. Worshippers were there to observe Ashura – the tenth day of Muharram, the first month of the lunar Islamic calendar. It is, arguably, the most important day of the year for Shia Muslims. “Ashura signifies what Shias are, and their identities are attached to the event of Ashura,” explained Jaffer Mirza, a PhD student at King’s College London, over the phone ahead of the event.
Within the UK, the Shia population makes up around 5 per cent of British Muslims, though there are distinct traditions and cultures within that originating from Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan (the Hazaras) and India (the Khojas, with the most famous being Zohran Mamdani). “Even the non-observant usually try to attend these Muharram gatherings, because this is something that makes them Shia,” Mirza said.
Growing up, Ashura was the only day I would be taken out of school for religious reasons, and we would drive down to the Shia mosque in Harrow to participate in the day-long event. In addition to the prayers, there would be the matam – tapping or beating your chest (depending on the enthusiasm and age of the worshipper) rhythmically to elegiac poetry – and a coffin-esque ceremonial box (taboot) with battle standards (alam). We would eat khichro, a chunky stew of slow-cooked meat, wheat and lentils. At home, there would be no television – it was a day for solemn reflection. In some Shia communities, passion plays – taʼziyeh – originally part of the Iranian observance, have become a popular way to encourage people to engage with the story of Ashura.
Ashura marks the martyrdom of Imam Hussain, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. Hussain, his family and companions were travelling to Kufa in modern-day Iraq when they were confronted at Karbala by an army many times their numbers sent by Umayyad caliph Yazid ibn Muʼawiya. Hussain had been asked to pledge allegiance to Yazid, but he declined, and then set off to Kufa with his group. At Karbala, Yazid’s army blocked them from getting water from the River Euphrates, despite the high temperatures and their dehydration.
Over the next few days, as the situation in Hussain’s camp became increasingly more desperate, the men of the camp, engaged in combat with the enemy one by one before falling. At one point, Hussain asks for water for his infant son, Ali Asghar; the child is shot by an archer at the orders of the enemy commander. Finally, on Ashura Day, Hussain confronts Yazid’s army. During the fighting, he stops to have a drink, is struck by an arrow and then decapitated. The story is told throughout the first nine days of Muharram at services in the mosque, culminating in Ashura Day.
The men’s section of Hyderi is at capacity. On the left-hand side is an area for elders and people with disabilities to sit; everyone else is sitting on the floor. Children sit with their fathers who try to keep them focused on the proceedings, but I see some toys being deployed to get the young ones through the service as older people are gently moved towards the chairs.
The room I’m in is wrapped in black with red lanterns and screens that display the prayers and Koranic recitations in Arabic and English as they are rhythmically spoken by a man at the front of the room. Sat near me, some attendees are following the recitation on an app on their phones. At the front, behind the lectern, is a chair in which the imam will sit. Moving from one set of prayers to another, the reciter starts to break down with emotion. His voice cracks as he asks God for justice for Imam Hussain, his family and companions. It is common for men to cry during the retelling of this story of massacre.
At around the same time I am sitting in the Centre, another Shia community – one organised by the Hussaini Association – begins an Ashura procession through central London, from Marble Arch to Downing Street. These processions feature more assertive and political messages, including support for Palestine, Lebanon and Iran. The modern processions started in the 1980s, though the first documented public observance of Ashura in London was in 1805 when, according to reports, Lascars – sailors or militiamen from South-East Asia, the majority of whom were Muslim – walked along the New Road in the east London area of Shadwell in “solemn procession”. In 1892, 2,000 Lascars processed in and around the docks in Cardiff for Ashura. Newspapers from the time note the Lascars were sometimes attacked along the route and defended themselves with sticks.
“When we look at festivals like Ashura, we think of them as explicitly Shia festivals, but many of the Muslims would have been living in part of the Ottoman empire and in a kind of premodern world,” explains Abdul-Azim Ahmed from the University of Cardiff. “So Ashura wasn’t so distinctly Shia – it was something that was shared by Sunnis and Shias. It was a public festival.”
“London in the next 20 or 30 years will be the major hub of Shia Islam,” Mirza said. “Most of the popular reciters and senior jurist offices of the Shia community are now living in Britain.”
While some believers view Ashura as a purely cosmological event, according to Mirza, many Shias – if not most – see it as a story about good and evil. “Imam Hussain tells us about the oppressed and the oppressor, and Shias might connect that to the relevant issues [of today], for example, Palestine,” he explained, before adding that there are also different lessons to be learned about patience and restraint.
Many Shias also view Hussain’s story as one of resistance through suffering. The story does not end with the clash on the banks of the Euphrates. Hussain’s camp was eventually set alight, and the survivors – many of them women – were imprisoned. They were later released and, in time, Hussain’s son become leader.
It is difficult to hear the story of Ashura and not think about ongoing conflicts, from Iran and Lebanon to Sudan, Palestine and Ukraine. Not just their locations in the world, which affect a large number of Muslims, but also the ways in which those conflicts have been prosecuted, the butchering of civilians in Bucha and elsewhere by Russian soldiers, the denial of water and humanitarian aid to Gaza, the bombing of a school and water reservoirs in Iran by the US, and the deliberate targeting of children by the Israel Defence Forces. Suffering goes on, as does resistance.
Back at the Hyderi Islamic Centre, people have taken a hydration break and are filing back in for Friday prayers. The temperature remains incredibly high. There are another nine hours before the events of the day conclude with a quiet candlelit walk.
[Further reading: Why the Islamic Republic of Iran endures]
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This article appears in the 01 Jul 2026 issue of the New Statesman, Happy Birthday America
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